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America the Melting Pot in Literature

America the Melting Pot in Literature

America has been called the melting pot of the world; this mixture of cultures and people has created a unique blend known only to America. The American people have themselves adapted this blend of cultures into something particular to certain areas of the country; two examples of this are the traditions of the slave states along the Mississippi River as are told by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the destruction of an old way of life for farmers and their quest for a new life as the result of the Dust Bowl Migration of the 1930’s, which is depicted in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. These two specific subcultures have similarities, which reflect the uniqueness of the area.

Sometimes the wisdom and gentleness that are the result of how a person was brought up are found in unlikely places. The slave Jim shows amazing perception and kindness when he prevents Huckleberry Finn from seeing that the dead body they had found was none other than Huck’s pap. While Jim knew that there was no love lost between Huck and his father, Jim knew that seeing your own father dead was something that would affect anyone. Perhaps he felt that Huck would fee guilty, but no matter what the reason, it was a very kind and wise thing to do. In Grapes of Wrath, Ma Joad is a veritable wellspring of wisdom:

“Man, he lives in jerks—baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk—
gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow,
like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on.
Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on—
changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.” (pg 423 Grapes of Wrath)

In a single, impressive monologue Ma reassures her family that their world and life won’t end, it will simply change a little, but she also informs her audience of how she knows this, which is more than many people would be able to do. Ma’s conviction that life will go on, and the way she views life seem to stem from the way a farmwife lives: constantly watching over one’s family, everything one does revolving around the needs and wants of the family, watching for signs...

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